Editor: The captions for the photo of the diver looking at the wing and the two men holding a wreath were wrong in an earlier version of this article.

Eric Denson said he was nearly overcome with emotion when the wing of an aircraft that crashed decades ago swam into view beneath the surface of Lake Huron.

"I almost cried underwater, if that’s possible, when I saw the star on the wing, the Army star," he said. "That’s really when it became real to me. To recognize these pilots gave their lives to their country, it really made my heart jump, and I almost cried underwater."

Denson, who lives in Orlando, Florida, is a diver and the lead instructor for the Diving with a Purpose archaeology program. He and several divers associated with the group, which focuses on the protection, documentation and interpretation of slave trade shipwrecks and the maritime history and culture of African-Americans, made a 2015 expedition to the crash site in Lake Huron of a P-39Q Airacobra that had been piloted by Lt. Frank H. Moody, one of the Tuskegee Airmen training at Selfridge Air Base.

A P-39 Airacobra piloted by Lt. Frank H. Moody crashed in Lake Huron during World War II.(Photo: Photo courtesy of Wayne Lusardi)

Denson wants to place a memorial to Moody, and other Tuskegee Airmen, along the waterfront in the Port Huron area, possibly at the Blue Water River Walk.

"... We laid a temporary wreath down there, but we were thinking about doing a permanent monument," Denson said. "Something where it would be visible and everybody could see the monument."

David and Drew Losinski, two local divers, discovered the wreck of Lt. Moody's fighter at the bottom of Lake Huron about five miles north of Port Huron in 2014.

They photographed the wreck site on April 11 of that year — 70 years after Lt. Moody's fatal crash on April 11, 1944.

Diver Wayne Lusardi approaches the wing of a fighter plane that crashed in Lake Huron during World War II.(Photo: Photo courtesy of Wayne Lusardi)

Denson recently sent a communication to the Community Foundation of St. Clair County, which holds title to the river walk through its subsidiary, Blue Water Land Fund, outlining his idea for a memorial.

"To me, the Tuskegee Airmen, they are our heroes," he said. "They are our national heroes. They fought for their country and what they believed in ... even at a time when their country didn’t believe in them."

The Tuskegee Airmen were African-American members of the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the United States Army Air Force. They served in World War II in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.

Wayne Lusardi, state maritime archaeologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, said the pieces of the wreck are in about 30 feet of water. He was the leader of the 2015 expedition in which Denson and five other divers from Diving with a Purpose participated.

The P-39 fighter plane found in Lake Huron was powered by this engine.(Photo: Photo courtesy of David and Drew Losinski)

"It’s a P-39," he said. "The airplane itself is not particularly unique, there were about 20,000 of them made …. but its association with the Tuskegee Airmen is significant. It is one of two known Tuskegee Airman crash sites anywhere."

The other crash site also has a local connection. Flight Officer Nathaniel Rayburg died on Dec. 12, 1943, when he crashed his P-39 in the St. Clair River near Algonac.

"That wreck was the first of the two airplanes," Lusardi said. "It was found by sport divers about 15 years ago."

The Losinskis, while doing research about Lt. Moody's crash, found a story about the accident in the Times Herald. According to the story, Lt. Moody and three other pilots were doing gunnery practice.

Mrs. Cecil V. Fowler saw the crash, according to the Times Herald article.

"It was the most horrible thing I have ever witnessed," she said. "There were four planes, and I was watching them from our front window, as I usually do when they're engaged in gunnery practice.

"Then everything happened so fast it seems unbelievable.

"Smoke started coming from the tail of the second plane, and I could see it was in trouble. The pilot apparently noticed it and tried to lift his ship.

"It was a feeble effort, for the plane seemed to lift for only a few feet and then it crashed, nose first, into the water. I saw a big splash, and then the plane went out of sight."

Moody's body was not recovered until it washed ashore in Port Huron on June 4, 1944, — two days before D-Day and the invasion of Normandy.

Kenneth Stewart, Diving with a Purpose co-founder and program director, said the group is applying for grants to fund the memorial, and memorials at two shipwreck sites with connections to black history in Florida, through the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

He said the grant proposal went out Wednesday.

Wayne Lusardi and Ernie Franklin with a wreath that was placed at the crash site in Lake Huron of a plane piloted by Lt. Frank Moody during World War II.(Photo: Photo courtesy of Wayne Lusardi)

"A lot of things have to be worked out before it can be done, for sure," he said. "We have an idea of what we want, but we have to go through all the hoops."

Denson said he remembered the river walk from his 2015 trip to Port Huron and thought the river walk would be an appropriate place for a memorial plaque.

"I don’t have any rendition or anything like that," he said. "I would like some sort of pedestal monument that people could see. ... I’m looking at some kind of pedestal with wording and maybe some graphics."

A call to the community foundation was not immediately returned Thursday.

Contact Bob Gross at (810) 989-6263 or rgross@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobertGross477.